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Published: August 11th 2011
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Today was the first day of our official tour of China. We were told to meet at 11am (which seemed late to us) in the front of the hostel ready for our day out. This was the first time we properly met the group, there are 15 of us, 3 boys and 12 girls aged between 19 - 24 and everyone seems nice. We also officially met our tour guide, a Chinese lady called Yiang Yiang who will be with us for our time in Beijing. It seems odd to be in a tour group now, I have been so acustomed to independant travelling with James that the whole 15 people following a tour guide thing may wear a tad thin after a while, but for now we'll see how it goes.
We boarded a bus to head to our first destination, which was lunch, at 11am when we had all only just finished breakfast. Lunch was good (even though we were not massively hungry) and consisted of a sampling of local Chinese food. It was a bit like being in a Chinese restaurant back home where you are on a round table with the lazy susan in the middle to spin the dishes round, however there was an enormous array of food that arrived and we all felt terrible for how much was wasted.
After lunch we were taken to the Tianemen Square, the centre point of Beijing and the largest square in the world. It had a very brash, communist feel to it that was worsened by the intense heat of the midday sun and before long all of us were sweating buckets. From the square we made our way through the Forbidden City, a culster of 9,999 rooms and pagodas spread out over around 5 square miles that was surrounded by a moat and where ancient Chinese Emporers used to live. It is difficult to describe the city as it is unlike anything I have ever seen before and it truly is a spectacular sight and an amazing feat of engineering considering how old it is. It is beautifully decorated and we were told that it takes around 2 years to repaint the whole thing to keep it in the good condition it is in.
From the Forbidden city we jumped back on the bus and headed to a pearl factory, where we were able to watch pearl shells being opened and see what they looked like before they are manufactured. There was (of course) a shop here selling an array of pearl jewelry to purchase, and Lizzie and I treated ourselves to some gorgeous white pearl earrings. From the pearl factory we head for yet more food, this time we sampled traditional Beijing Duck with all the trimmings, it was just like the duck pancakes at the Chinese at home, only much much better! For the remainder of the evening we had the option of heading to an acrobat show, but for £18 we weren't interested and neither were the two girls who we went to the Great Wall with the other day, CJ and Emily. Instead we took a stroll around the city and found a beautiful park in the midst of the tall skyscrapers. It was an amaing little find and it had a skating rink in the middle of it full of locals. We wandered around the lake that it had until we stumbled upon this amazingly cool exercise park, again full of locals and we had fun for a while playing on all their exercise machines. We evenutally left the park as it was getting dark and as it was CJ's birthday today we grabbed some beer from the shop and stayed up with the rest of the tour group when they got back from the show playing cards and making friends with the local Chinese people that were staying in the hostel. All in all, it was a pretty great day!
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